At Bombay Sapphire's new Laverstoke Mill distillery (distillery.bombaysapphire.com; entrance £15)in Hampshire, a foaming river of gin and tonic flows under bridges sculpted from ice; all you have to do is lean over and dunk your glass in, then pluck a low-lying lemon from a tree overhead and slice a piece off while whistling the song 'Pure Imagination' from 'Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory'.

Well, not quite. But the reality is almost as incredible. The site, a former Victorian paper mill that once made banknotes for the Bank of England, was discovered when Bacardi's John Burke, on the hunt for a suitable site, jumped over a wall and explored the warren of derelict redbrick buildings. Over the past four years, it's been reimagined by bright-spark architect Thomas Heatherwick, who conjured the Olympic Cauldron for London 2012 and the new Routemaster bus, and whose future projects include the new V&A Waterfront museum in Cape Town and - possibly - London's Garden Bridge.

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The centrepiece is undoubtedly Heatherwick's incredible pair of glasshouses - handmade from 793 unique pieces - which flow out of the side of the redbrick like glittering squids and contain the botanicals used to make Bombay Sapphire gin - juniper, lemon, liquorice, etc. One is labelled 'Mediterranean', the other 'Tropical', and both are warmed with recycled heat from the distilling process. 'Britain has a history of big glass structures, like Chatsworth, Crystal Palace and Kew,' says Heatherwick, 'and we seem to have lost the joy in their original structures.' But a big part of his achievement lies in what you don't see: the removal of 23 structures in order to untangle the building and reveal the River Fleet, which runs through the property. 'It was built up like barnacles into this cacophony of structures,' says Heatherwick. 'You could barely see the river and there was no sense of the English countryside.'

Laverstoke Mill feels quintessentially English, mixing handsome industrial redbrick with graceful glass and chuckling water, and has all the presence and poise of a pre-Raphaelite beauty - albeit a slightly sozzled one. On arrival visitors are given a microchipped guide, which unlocks information points around the site. Many will doubtless want to head straight to the Empire or Mill bar for a snifter, but visit the Botanical Dry Room first, a flavour lab where all the botanicals are laid out in their raw form and in smelling jars where you can clear your nostrils with 'Bitter Almonds with Nutty Character' or 'Bitter Almonds with Buttery Character'. If you need a bed to flop into after one too many Aviations, the Four Seasons Hotel Hampshire is not far away.

Also opening this month is the Cotswold Distillery (cotswoldsdistillery.com) in a pretty, honey-stoned farmhouse in Stourton. It's more modest in scale and ambition than Laverstoke, but worth a visit for a fascinating, behind-the-scenes glimpse of artisanal gin-making. American-born whisky aficionado Daniel Szor saw fields of barley in the Cotswolds and realised no one was distilling there. He and the team, which includes head distiller Alex Davies, formerly at the Chase Distillery, experimented with 50 recipes before finding the right mix for their gin (a single malt whisky will be ready for release in 2017), which contains organic lavender, bay leaf, grapefruit and black pepper. 'I feel incredibly spoilt being able to work here,' says Szor: 'No motorways, no traffic, just the odd herd of cattle being moved from one field to the next that causes any kind if congestion. We even had a herd of Cotswold cattle in our neighbouring field fattening up on our spent barley.' If you need somewhere to stay afterwards, head to the Red Lion at nearby Long Compton (redlion-longcompton.co.uk; doubles from £90).

The juniper flag is being planted in more and more places around the UK, and those wishing to take a tipsy tour of Britain can now stop off on the shores of Lake Bassenthwaite in Cumbria, where the Lakes Distillery (lakesdistillery.com), in a former Victorian model farm, makes gin using locally foraged bilberry, meadowsweet, hawthorn and heather; and Southwold in Suffolk, where you can make your own gin at the Adnams Copper House Distillery (tours.adnams.co.uk). There's the venerable Plymouth Distillery of course (plymouthgin.com; tour £7), while in London, the recently opened Beefeater Gin Museum in Kennington has mock 19th-century streets and secret speakeasies (beefeaterdistillery.com; tour £12). Also in London, the Sipsmiths distillery has moved to bigger premises in Chiswick (sipsmith.com; tour £15) and a new copper still, Constance, has joined her sisters Prudence and Patience. The city's latest distillery, the East London Liquor Company (eastlondonliquorcompany.com), opened in May in a former glue factory on Bow Wharf. You can join a tour (visit virginexperiencedays.co.uk/the-gin-lovers-tour), but the best way to appreciate its two gleaming copper stills is from the bar, sipping a classic gimlet or a Darjeeling Sour, made specially to highlight the tea botanical of its London Dry gin.